The 2023 User's Choice Awards

[Skippy]

The votes have been counted and the winners are now in!

So, 2023 has certainly been another year.

Whether your December was marked by chill mornings and short days, or blistering sun and long balmy afternoons, whether Christmas for you is a religious festival, an excuse to eat Turkey and exchange presents, or just another day, one thing is the same for everyone. What makes this month special, or any month of the year for that matter, is taking the time to be close to those we hold dear, and let them know how much we cherish them. It's in that spirit that we choose this time of the year to hold the User's Choice Awards, and share together that which we hold dear.

Writing fiction on the internet is a profoundly altruistic act when you get down to it, sharing your passion with others without any thought of remuneration. We can't thank every quest master, fanfic author, and other wonderful person who has chosen to create something on SV personally. But the User Choice Awards is sort of our way of saying "thank you" to all of them, collectively, for writing the stories, quests, and other amazing things which make this forum worth the candle. Not to mention all the amazing quest voters, readers, discussion-havers, and other users whose enthusiasm keeps this site's authors going, and many of whom came out to support their favourite works in this years awards.

Speaking of which, if you are reading this and have not taken the chance to check out some of the other winning entries or this year's nominees, there's no better time! This year has been absolutely packed with some amazing stuff, and reading through the backlist of the UCA is a great way to discover some fantastic quests, stories and other works you might not have known about. You can find the nominees for each respective category in the top of the voting threads for each award category.

And now without further ado, the winners of the 2023 Sufficient Velocity User's Choice Awards as chosen by you:

Quest Awards

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Best Ongoing Quest​	Best Completed Quest​
Equestria: The House of the Sun - A pony cultist experience by @BirdBodhisattva​ ​	Petals of Titanium -- My Life as a Mecha Setting Bridge Bunny Quest by @Gazetteer​ ​

User Fiction Awards

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Best Ongoing Fic​	Best Completed Fic​
Illuminating Invitation (MLP:FiM AU) by @Alivaril​ ​	Impurity (Worm AU) by @Aleph and @EarthScorpion​ ​

Alternate History Awards

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Best Alternate History​	Best GSRP​
Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline by @Aelita​ ​	Avatar: Shattered Stone by @AMTurtle and @triumph8w​ ​

Original Awards

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Best New Work​	Best Original Work​
Illuminating Invitation (MLP: FiM AU) by @Alivaril​ ​	A Little Vice (Trans Magical Girl fic) by @Shadell​ ​

Lastly, a big thank you to my fellow Content Promoters, @Havocfett, @Arcus, @ArlequineLunaire, @Walker, who have worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make these Awards a success as well as running the many other fantastic events on offer during Winterfest. Special congratulations to @Havocfett on his recent wedding!

Last of all, thank you to all of the authors, QMs, and users who make these Awards possible. You are all truly wonderful, and we here at the Content Promotion department wish you all a Happy New Year!

This thread will remain open for discussion (as will the Voting threads), until sometime in the next week or so when everything Winterfest-related will be archived. Thank you all, and let's look forward to a new year which will hopefully be brighter than the last one.

 

[Arcus]

In practice the recency effect has been fairly strong and all previous winners of the UCA thus far have been stories that were active within the same year.

I get the point that people might be holding back because of the presumption that it was only for works that finished that year (although we've explicitly stated there's no expiration date) but it seems a bit sour grapes to move to disqualify older works the moment they look poised to win.

One issue is that it's not like we have a particularly rigorous or structured nominations process, it's just been people nominating stories they've actually read and enjoyed.

 

[Skippy]

Golden oldies perhaps? I get the sentiment, but it does kinda seem kinda odd that everything else is regulated to 2023.

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The only categories which specify a work needs to have begun or updated in 2023 are the Best New Work and Best Ongoing Quest/Fic categories. That's about a third of the award categories in total, and in both cases, because those categories are specifically for new or recent works. All of our other award categories have no restriction other than previous winners not being allowed to double-dip.

Generally, the User's Choice Awards exist to showcase the most popular works on SV. Whilst there is undoubtedly some recency bias at play, there's really no reason why we wouldn't happy with a popular work from any year winning, so long as it can inspire the enthusiasm to garner enough votes to win.

 

[Erien]

In practice the recency effect has been quite strong and all previous winners of the UCA thus far have been stories that were active within the same year.

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The only categories which specify a work needs to have begun or updated in 2023 are the Best New Work and Best Ongoing Quest/Fic categories. That's about a third of the award categories in total, and in both cases, because those categories are specifically for new or recent works. All of our other award categories have no restriction other than previous winners not being allowed to double-dip.

Generally, the User's Choice Awards exist to showcase the most popular works on SV. Whilst there is undoubtedly some recency bias at play, there's really no reason why we wouldn't happy with a popular work from any year winning, so long as it can inspire the enthusiasm to garner enough votes to win.

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Fair enough. Not trying to raise a fuss in any case, just was confused.

 

[Arcus]

Fair enough. Not trying to raise a fuss in any case, just was confused.

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We always welcome more feedback and input, so don't feel like you're kicking up a fuss. These are points that are worth being considered, even if we ultimately decide to not implement them.

 

[xbox432]

Golden oldies perhaps? I get the sentiment, but it does kinda seem kinda odd that everything else is regulated to 2023. I didn't want to go bumping any of my older threads as it seemed rather against the spirit. Until now I thought it was just restricted to the current year.

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That is a compromise I would be fine with, a Golden Oldies Award. This way older threads can still get some recognition for their nostalgia without overshadowing stories which have concluded recently.

That effectively means any stories that don't win within the year are barred from all future UCAs permanently, in addition to already being at a disadvantage because they're not as recent. I'm not really sure how that's supposed to be more fair.

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I didn't say it would be more fair for the older stories, but that the current format could be unfair for the more recently completed stories. And isn't the point of a yearly award ceremony like this to celebrate the stories and threads of the current year?

Spoiler: Date Comparisons

Completed Quests: Impurity - 18/Dec/2020, Minerva Golding and the Wand of Silver - 14/Aug/2023, TEMPUS FUGIT SPECIAL FUNDRAISER TIMESTREAM | BOYFRIEND FACE REVEAL - 23/Aug/2022, ELDRITCH VOIDTUBER VIRIDIAN S. LAUGHTER HUNTING BLOOD-STREAM | BLUE HILLS APARTMENT COMPLEX FULL WALKTHROUGH! - 9/Jun/2022

Completed Quests: By the Homeworld I'll Someday be Banned From - 14/Nov/2023, Suffer Not ≡][≡ 40k Inquisition Quest - 2/Jan/2023, Spartacus Rising 1919: An Alt-TL Revolution Quest - 2/Feb/2023, Of Wizards and Winter (WHF Wizard Quest) - 8/May/2023, The Practice War - 14/Nov/2019, Petals of Titanium -- My Life as a Mecha Setting Bridge Bunny Quest - 1/Dec/2019, Kingdom of God: A Quest of Holy Revolution - 19/Jun/2022

And if you look at the nominees... For Quests, 3/7 are from prior years. For Stories, 3/4 are from prior years. Many of which have been nominated for multiple years now but keep getting beaten. So does this mean they just keep being submitted until the process of elimination hands them an award? That seems more insulting than anything...

And as I said, this seems quite unfair for the newer completed stories. After all, they haven't had multiple years of exposure. Give the ones completed this year their time to shine in the spotlight. Let the authors who put in the effort to push through and complete a story rather than abandoning it get recognition.

Though as Erien suggested, I'd be fine with older threads having their own category. This way as time sets in, people can look back and say "Yes, this was a good story. Those of you who missed it need to go check it out." And they can do this without clubbing the newbies over the head.

We always welcome more feedback and input, so don't feel like you're kicking up a fuss. These are points that are worth being considered, even if we ultimately decide to not implement them.

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And that's fine, this is just something I thought should be discussed as the dates on some of the stories surprised me. I was wondering why I hadn't seen them on the "Trending/Recently Updated" feed, only for "Oh, that's from three years ago." The ratio for the Completed Stories is what got me to post this thought in the first place. It just seemed that a lot of more recent stories were pushed out of the running to make way for older ones.

The competition as is works fine, but the "Golden Oldies Award" idea really has stuck in my mind now...

 

[Erien]

And as I said, this seems quite unfair for the newer completed stories. After all, they haven't had multiple years of exposure. Give the ones completed this year their time to shine in the spotlight. Let the authors who put in the effort to push through and complete a story rather than abandoning it get recognition.

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Admittedly, part of my posting was it kinda hurt to see I wasn't actually facing this years competitors. Makes it feel kinda pointless on my part to be competing with older works. As it means I'm sort facing the entirety of SV's completed catalogue, unlike the other categories. If they earn it, they earn it, it just feels really weird to me.

 

[Arcus]

And if you look at the nominees... For Quests, 3/7 are from prior years. For Stories, 3/4 are from prior years. Many of which have been nominated for multiple years now but keep getting beaten. So does this mean they just keep being submitted until the process of elimination hands them an award? That seems more insulting than anything...

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I get what you mean, but it needs to be considered that the nomination process isn't really comprehensive or structured enough to ensure that everything that finished in that year is at least put up for consideration. To move to implement an expiration date would be to cut off dozens of works that missed their chance simply because there weren't enough people informed and motivated enough to nominate them during the weeks the contest was actually open.

The Ongoing category also isn't actually immune from the problem you bring up either, since you can just keep nominating works that have been running for multiple years, so arguably we would also have to take measures to address that if older works being repeatedly nominated is perceived to be a problem (my inclination would be to just blacklist the previous year's nominees, not permanently, but at least for the next year's UCA).

And in terms of "giving newcomers a chance", we already have the specific award category for Best New Work, and all of the Ongoing categories that are limited to works that have had updates this year, on top of new works also being eligible for the Completed category as long as they meet the criteria.

 

[thepsyborg]

Would love to see previous winners listed somewhere as well (both for general information and particularly given that they're no longer eligible for repeat awards).

Edit: ESPECIALLY since the "Events Archive" forum isn't locatable from the Winterfest forum; it's tucked away under General Discussion --> Fiction Discussion for some ungodly reason. Took me forever to find it.

Perhaps something like:

Spoiler: large quotepost edited to show what I'm talking about

Quest Awards

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Best Ongoing Quest​	Best Completed Quest​
Previous Winners: Rhunrikki Strollar by @soulcake (2022) Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest by @Boney (2021)​	Previous Winners: Breaker of Chains (30k Angron Quest) by @Maugan Ra (2022) Now You Feel Like Number None by @Omicron (2021)​

User Fiction Awards

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Best Ongoing Fic​	Best Completed Fic​
Previous Winners: Hard Enough - Pokemon SI by @Viva01 (2022) Pound the Table by @October Daye (2021)​	Previous Winners: Ring-Maker by @Lithos Maitreya (2022) Lieutenant Fusilier in the Farthest Reaches by @open_sketch (2021)​

Alternate History Awards

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Best Alternate History​	Best GSRP​
Previous Winners: The Space Pirate King by @EBR (2022) Attempting to Fulfill the Plan MNKh Edition by @Blackstar (2021)​	Previous Winners: STAR WARS: IMPERIAL TWILIGHT by @Karen ​

Original Awards

Best New Work	Best Original Work
Previous Winners: Revolt-Revolution, Yes-Yes! by @The Laurent (2022 Best New Quest) Hard Enough - Pokemon SI by @Viva01 (2022 Best New Fic)	Previous Winners: For the Tyrants Fear Your Might by @AKuz and others (2022) Threads Of Destiny by @yrsillar (2021 Best Original Quest)

Or perhaps just a quick link like:

Previous winners may be found here: [2022] [2021]

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[Young Pyromancer]

It looks like the same two fics are leading the new and ongoing categories. What a surprise.

 

[Deathbybunnies]

You know, it might be funny to hold a "dead fic" competition at Halloween, for stuff that's been abandoned/permanently-hiatused. It would let people highlight stories that don't fit here, avoid cluttering up other holiday events, and might even drag a few back from beyond the grave.

 

[Alivaril]

You know, it might be funny to hold a "dead fic" competition at Halloween, for stuff that's been abandoned/permanently-hiatused. It would let people highlight stories that don't fit here, avoid cluttering up other holiday events, and might even drag a few back from beyond the grave.

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I know that I, at least, would be torn between feeling flattered and taking severe psychic damage if any of my stuff ended up there.

EDIT: I think there would have to be multiple winners of that contest, though, or else BAHHSCQ would likely sweep.

 

[WallFlower]

I think that Dungeon Keeper Ami would win at least one dead fic contest given how active it's fanbase still is.
It would be fitting given how dark Empress Mercury has become Crowned Death's favorite dungeon keeper.

 

[Erien]

Grats to @Gazetteer, was a packed year for quests.

 

[CeBrudras]

Thanks for the contests! Once again it brought some wonderful works to my attention.

I need to append one awkward update to all my impressions I posted during the voting, though:
I initially just entirely bounced off of House of the Sun, but the combination of it having already been clearly on track to win and the fantastic Illuminating Invitation softening my hesitancy towards Pony stuff made me give it another go. And, uhm, I am not certain whether "edgy" is actually a fitting description in its entirety, but that word definitely conveys how good the work is at handling heavy subjects with the proper care and respect.
I feel a bit bad about tarnishing a winner like this, but just take along this warning before you have a look at that particular work.

Edit: To make a clarifying example: The specific scene that made me stop reading was a suicide by a PoV character that was just depicted without the care and grace a topic like that deserves. Treat any trigger warnings not just as 'X is in work' but as 'The work is hella casual with X'.

 

[Young Pyromancer]

The same fic won ongoing and new again, as expected.

 

[StormySky]

I need to append one awkward update to all my impressions I posted during the voting, though:
I initially just entirely bounced off of House of the Sun, but the combination of it having already been clearly on track to win and the fantastic Illuminating Invitation softening my hesitancy towards Pony stuff made me give it another go. And, uhm, I am not certain whether "edgy" is actually a fitting description in its entirety, but that word definitely conveys how good the work is at handling heavy subjects with the proper care and respect.
I feel a bit bad about tarnishing a winner like this, but just take along this warning before you have a look at that particular work. And the QM might want to copypaste that extensive list of trigger warnings they eventually started attaching to every new update into the actual first post.

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Agreed. The writing quality itself is pretty good and generally engaging, but if you have a tendency to get emotionally attached to quest protagonists and their more heroic qualities, or particularly care about strong player agency/lack of railroading/being able to do write-ins/no gotcha options, it miiight be better to find a different quest. Because the author seems to want to write a particular kind of story, and that leads to us being misinformed or jumped with things we didn't vote for, or voting for something with one intention and getting told it was akshully another (the CWs were only put in after the infraction and tribunal over the implied rape scene that I don't believe any of the voters expected were going to happen).

I guess you'll still be fine if you treat it like a particularly dark and interactive piece of User Fiction, though.

 

[Randino Treviani]

I didn't say it would be more fair for the older stories, but that the current format could be unfair for the more recently completed stories. And isn't the point of a yearly award ceremony like this to celebrate the stories and threads of the current year?

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Not particularly. as was stated by others previously it's about celebrating the community in general and favorite works overall, other than the 3(previously 4) categories which can only apply to recent options.

I'm not sure you can make a clear case on whether exposure is greater for older completed quests or recently completed ones. One might have a stable of committed fans, but the other is less far back for SV newbies to scroll back to and find.

I think the fact that this is the first time the issue has come up, in how many years of holding these awards, is telling? If exposure were that much of an advantage, surely this would have come up sooner?

Every choice award I've been here for has had an oldy or two, and it went ignored, because they simply weren't winning, the oldies themselves not feeling the need to gripe about the lack of an award or two in which they wouldn't be facing competition from fresher stories.

Either way, I'll trust the SV staff to make a responsible decision, with a note that I support more awards being available in general. This includes splitting the new works award back into the new fic and new quests awards, as fan fic section of SV clearly has a larger voter participant base than the quest section, leaving new quests unfairly handicapped in terms of securing nominee qualification votes.

Edit: in general, congrats to all the winners and nominees and good luck with your works, new or old, in the new year.

 

[Alivaril]

An enthusiastic "thank you" for everyone who voted for Illuminating Invitation! I expected to be utterly demolished, and I'm honestly shocked that it won both categories it was nominated in. I'm quite happy about the validation and hope it'll encourage more people to look past the part where Illuminating Invitation features ponies (and an eldritch abomination). I mean, I'm pretty sure more than half the audience doesn't know or care about My Little Pony anyway, and am quite proud I've lured in so many readers who didn't give a flying feather about MLP.

I'd like to give a quick shout-out to two of the other nominees, though.

@Dermonster's Hyphen is a delightful tale of an alien child (a Ralts, specifically) exploring a world unfamiliar to them. It's not as underrated as it once was, but I still feel as though it isn't yet getting the recognition it deserves. It's an excellent piece of xenofiction; though the updates might be slow, they're always a treat.

@Eotyrannus's A Certain Mental Isekai is another excellent story, and is responsible for the recent spike in RailDex fiction, including one from me before Illuminating Invitation seized me and refused to let go. I especially enjoy the unusual twist on the SI genre: the protagonist both does not possess any setting knowledge, and due to the differing laws of physics, has gaslit herself into believing that the memories of another world must surely be false.

Furthermore, considering the relative populations between different forums, @Eotyrannus likely could have won upon aggressively campaigning on SpaceBattles. Instead, Eotyrannus opted to be a good sport, deleted the post mentioning it there, and kept the rest of the contest on SV. Lots of people would have doubled down; campaigning on other sites wasn't against the rules. Prioritizing sportsmanship over an advantage is honestly pretty admirable, IMO.

Happy New Year, everyone!

 

[Young Pyromancer]

@Dermonster's Hyphen is a delightful tale of an alien child (a Ralts, specifically) exploring a world unfamiliar to them. It's not as underrated as it once was, but I still feel as though it isn't yet getting the recognition it deserves. It's an excellent piece of xenofiction; though the updates might be slow, they're always a treat.

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Ah, right, I was reviewing that, wasn't I?

I still have a half finished breakdown of chapter 3 in the notes app on my phone.

Should get back around to that at some point.

 

[Gazetteer]

Thank you to everyone who felt like my writing was worth recognition here -- it's the third year in a row that Petals of Titanium was nominated for best completed quest, and I truly appreciate that so many people still think about it four years (yikes, linear time!) after it originally ended.

Congratulations to all the other winners, and to all the nominees that didn't come away with the top prizes. There is a tremendous amount of good writing uploaded to this site, and this whole process always reminds me of that.

 

[Dermonster]

@Dermonster's Hyphen is a delightful tale of an alien child (a Ralts, specifically) exploring a world unfamiliar to them. It's not as underrated as it once was, but I still feel as though it isn't yet getting the recognition it deserves. It's an excellent piece of xenofiction; though the updates might be slow, they're always a treat.

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Thank you for the shoutout! Like I said in the other thread, Invitations has been a delight so far.

As for recognition, all I will say is that I frequently come across people recommending pokemon fanfiction in certain areas of the internet and I am consistently disappointed that I do not show up. Also a massive case of comment envy for more mainstream works, and even some other pokemon works. Theres a constant feeling like I missed the popularity boat despite the fact that I am by most metrics pretty successful. Ego is a terrible and inquenchable thirst to have.

Ah, right, I was reviewing that, wasn't I?

I still have a half finished breakdown of chapter 3 in the notes app on my phone.

Should get back around to that at some point.

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👁️

 

[Yu Narukaze]

@Eotyrannus's A Certain Mental Isekai is another excellent story, and is responsible for the recent spike in RailDex fiction, including one from me before Illuminating Invitation seized me and refused to let go. I especially enjoy the unusual twist on the SI genre: the protagonist both does not possess any setting knowledge, and due to the differing laws of physics, has gaslit herself into believing that the memories of another world must surely be false.

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I'll be honest, I kinda regret voting for both Illuminating Invitation (your story) and Mental Isekai, because... well, your story is good, don't get me wrong, but Mental Isekai is fucking amazing and if I had known II was winning at the time I'd have only voted for Mental Isekai.

 

[BirdBodhisattva]

I wrote a longer (and definitely boring and cringe) thank-you post in my quest. So, I'll keep it short here in respect to everyone's time.

Still, I would like to thank everyone who thought my story was worth the result it achieved!

However, I think the best thing that happened was the sheer exposure all the participants gained. None of the nominees (for any category) were nominated for nothing, and this competition felt more like a freely-distributed list of gold mines than anything else! Or at least, I am honestly glad that people who never heard of any of us (nominees) were given a heads-up about our stories!

So thank you for voting. Congratulations to everyone involved. And go out there read the awesome works you just learned exist!

 

[CeBrudras]

I guess you'll still be fine if you treat it like a particularly dark and interactive piece of User Fiction, though.

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I don't really like just summarizing the issue as 'It's dark', because, like, have you read A Little Vice or Petals of Titanium? Both of these other winners also don't hold any punches in that regard.
But either of these is very deliberate when it goes to dark places. The House of the Sun just feels super casual when it tackles heavy themes and that is what bothers me.